Van Gogh Museum’s Green Sun: A 2025 Review

You know, you sort of think you have a handle on Van Gogh. Honestly, we all do, with his sunflowers and starry nights practically part of our shared cultural DNA. But the Van Gogh Museum’s 2025 special presentation, ‘Secret of the Green Sun,’ actually just turns that familiar picture on its head. In fact, I went in expecting to see the old favorites in a new light, but what I got was a very different story, like a completely new chapter I never knew existed. Apparently, this whole presentation centers on a single, unsettling motif that you might have seen but never truly registered: a sun that isn’t golden, or orange, or yellow, but a sort of haunting, ethereal green. At the end of the day, it’s a small detail that changes everything, and this show digs deep into what it really meant for him.

A Walk into an Unseen Spectrum

Basically, the way they set this up is quite clever. The first gallery is just a little darker than you’d expect, almost forcing your eyes to adjust, you know? The walls are painted a deep, moody charcoal, so the paintings almost float in the space. They begin with some of his earlier work from his time in the Netherlands, pieces that are typically quite somber. For example, they’ve managed to get ‘The Potato Eaters’ on loan, and it’s right there, but the curation directs you to a single dab of chartreuse on a lantern, almost like it’s a tiny seed of what’s to come. Honestly, it’s a detail I have absolutely never seen before in all my time looking at prints of this piece. The provided commentary suggests this wasn’t an accident, but maybe an early twitch of his need to show light in a way nobody else did, right?

As I was saying, you move from one room to another, and the mood slowly changes. You can sort of feel the chill of the North giving way to the coming warmth of France. They have a selection of his Paris works, and that’s where the green starts to appear a bit more boldly. It’s often not in the sun itself, not yet anyway, but in the reflections on water, or in the cast of a shadow on a white tablecloth. Clearly, this is done on purpose, to build a kind of visual argument piece by piece. There is a study of a wheat field, for instance, where the sky is a standard blue, but the light hitting the stalks has a pretty strange, almost acidic greenish-yellow glow. You get this sense that he was fighting with color, trying to make it express a feeling that traditional shades just couldn’t capture.

The Heart of the Exhibition: Arles and the Radiant Light

Okay, the main part of this whole show really hits you when you get to the Arles period. This is where the ‘green sun’ concept really takes center stage, literally. So, ‘The Sower’ is given its own wall, and frankly, it is incredibly powerful to see in person. The sun behind the sower is a massive, shocking orb of what I can only describe as absinthe green, bleeding into a pale-yellow sky. You feel the heat, yes, but it’s a weird, unnatural heat, you know? It’s like the sun is radiating a kind of nervous energy instead of just light. Standing in front of it, you start to feel what the curators are getting at. This wasn’t just about painting what he saw; I mean, this was about painting what he felt on a deeply personal level. A sun like that is almost a state of mind.

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. – Vincent van Gogh

In the same way, another piece that stops you in your tracks is a lesser-known landscape from around the same time. The curators have given it the name ‘Evening Walk at Montmajour’. In it, a small couple strolls under a sky that is almost entirely shades of lime and emerald. The sun, setting, is just a smear of sickly green above the horizon. By the way, the museum uses a cool trick here: very focused lighting isolates the top half of the painting, so you’re almost forced to look at this sky for a good minute before taking in the whole scene. In that case, you see the tension he must have been feeling. It’s a peaceful scene made deeply unsettling by one color choice. Seriously, you start looking for it everywhere, a little game of ‘spot the green sun’ in his other works.

Beyond the Canvas: His Words and Sketches

To be honest, what really ties this all together is the section with his letters. The museum has these really neat interactive displays where you can touch a screen and see excerpts from his correspondence with his brother, Theo, come to life. The pages are digitized in super high resolution, so you can see his handwriting, the little ink blots and all. You just touch a highlighted phrase, and an English translation appears next to it. For example, they’ve pulled out a line where he talks about “a sun of sulfur… a sun of hope, but it must be green.” Suddenly, the paintings make even more sense. You’re not just guessing; he’s more or less telling you what he was trying to do. It feels very intimate, like he’s in the room explaining it to you himself, you know?

Also, his sketchbooks are here, and that’s a real treat. A lot of these are just quick little pencil or ink studies, but you can see him working out these ideas. There’s a whole wall of them, just pages where he’s doodling suns. Sometimes they’re spiky and aggressive, sometimes they’re soft and hazy. In the corner of one sketch of a peasant woman, there’s a tiny sun with the word ‘vert’ (French for green) written right next to it. At the end of the day, it’s these little scraps that offer some of the biggest revelations. You really get a peek into his process, seeing how an idea like a green sun went from a private thought to a major element on the canvas. It’s pretty amazing, actually.

A Modern Reflection on a Timeless Vision

So, the final room of the exhibition is a complete departure, which might not be for everyone, but I kind of liked it. It’s a modern response to the theme. They’ve commissioned a digital artist to create an immersive installation. Basically, you walk into a room with screens on all four walls, and a generative artwork slowly unfolds around you. It pulls colors directly from Van Gogh’s ‘green sun’ paintings, creating these slow, shifting patterns of light and color. Soft music plays, and the colors—the deep indigos, the fiery yellows, and of course, that strange, glowing green—wash over you. It’s really calming, in a way, and it’s a smart move. It allows you to stop analyzing and just feel the emotional impact of his palette. I mean, it lets you experience the color instead of just looking at it.

This final space, I think, leaves you with a very profound question: what does it mean to see the world differently? Van Gogh’s green sun was his reality, his way of expressing something for which there were no words. It wasn’t a mistake or a stylistic quirk; it was an emotional truth. In other words, the exhibition doesn’t just show you strange paintings. Instead, it invites you to think about how our own feelings color our view of the world around us. Frankly, it’s a very human idea, and it’s what makes this exhibition so much more than just another look at a famous artist. You leave the museum looking at the sky a little differently, sort of wondering what color the sun really is for you.

Helpful Information for Your Visit

Okay, so if you are planning on going, there are definitely a few things to keep in mind to make the experience better. First, book your tickets online, and do it as far ahead as you can. Seriously, the slots for these special shows fill up very quickly, especially on weekends. Going on a weekday morning, like a Tuesday or Wednesday right when they open, is typically your best bet for a slightly less crowded visit. You’ll have more space to stand back and really take in the bigger pieces without feeling rushed, which for an exhibit like this, you really want. In fact, allow yourself a good two to three hours. There’s a lot of text to read in the form of his letters and detailed notes next to the paintings, and you don’t want to skim over that stuff.

By the way, the audio guide for this specific exhibition is absolutely worth the extra few euros. It adds a lot of context and shares stories that aren’t on the wall text, especially interviews with the curators about why they chose certain pieces. One last tip: the gift shop has a special collection for ‘Secret of the Green Sun,’ with some genuinely lovely things beyond the usual postcards. They have these really beautiful notebooks and scarves that use the green-and-yellow palette from ‘The Sower.’ Honestly, it’s a nice way to take a little piece of that very unique and specific feeling home with you. It’s just a great visit all around, you know?

Key Takeaways

• The 2025 ‘Secret of the Green Sun’ exhibition focuses on Vincent van Gogh’s surprising and deliberate use of green for the sun in his work.
• You can pretty much see how this theme started with tiny hints in his early Dutch pieces and then became a major part of his work in Arles.
• His personal letters to his brother Theo, which are displayed in an interactive way, give direct insight into his motivations for this color choice.
• The curation is smart, with a layout and lighting that build a case for the importance of this ‘green sun’ concept.
• Booking tickets online and well in advance is a really good idea, as this will likely be a very popular attraction.

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